Sacrifice
by sunnywinterclouds
Summary: On a cold winter day, Peter visits the grave of a little boy known as himself. T for angst.


**My 20****th**** FF :)**

**Something I've always wanted to see.**

**This is for AriOreo24 for being sweet, kind, encouraging, helpful, distracting, faithful, cursed by the typo god, and a wonderful friend and beta.**

It was strange, to say the least.

He'd known it would be – sitting at the place where _he_ was buried, that little boy that died all those years ago – but he'd had no chance of preparing himself for _this_.

Why was he _here?_

It just wasn't right, it wasn't _fair_.

He closed his eyes and knelt down in front of the grave, letting his fingers run through the soft grass that lay there.

It wasn't fair.

He wasn't sure whether to cry or not, if he should say something, if he even had the _right_ to be upset because he never _knew_ this boy and this boy never knew _him._

Peter removed one of his gloves and reached his hand out hesitantly. He could see his breath as he deeply exhaled.

His fingertips touched the cold stone, and that was all it took.

Something inside him broke, just _broke_, and he let a dry sob escape him.

And he didn't know _why_.

This boy was a stranger to him, a complete and utter nobody, a kid that he had never met and never would and shouldn't _matter_ to him.

He did.

If this boy had lived, everything would be different.

He buried his head in his hands and sighed, settling down on the hard ground. He shifted his position in an attempt to get more comfortable before resting on his knees and bending his forehead down to lay it upon the cold grave in front of him.

His eyes came into contact with the words that he had already read over and over in the last ten minutes, the words he had known he would find long before he parked his car and trudged up the hill to this dark and dismal site.

_Peter Bishop_

_1978 – 1985_

Peter shivered, but not from the weather.

What _if_ this boy had lived?

The universes would be okay. There would be no war, there would be no problems or deaths or weekly Fringe events or a crazy mad scientist of a father working with him in the lab all day.

How would his life be?

Would he even _have_ a life?

He clenched his jaw in bitter resignation, squeezing his eyes shut as he came to his inevitable conclusion.

If this Walter had found a cure, had saved his child and never crossed over to save _him,_ then this Peter Bishop would be the one in the grave.

Because that was the way it worked – one of them _had_ to die.

There was just no way around it.

But as he sat there, for the first and possibly the last time in his life, the impact of everything that had happened hit him at full force.

This was not the burial site of some boy that he had never met, that had never mattered to him because he was not somebody he had known and he was not somebody he had cared about.

This was the burial site of _him_.

How many people had the chance to walk over their own grave? To sit there, to brood over their own death and wonder what would have happened if it were the other way around? To mourn the loss of _themselves?_

To touch the dirt where you lay, where the person who could have and _would_ have been you if everything hadn't gone sour, was buried.

To maybe, just maybe, wish that it had been you.

Because it wasn't _fair._

Technicalities didn't matter, _nothing_ mattered, because Peter Bishop was dead.

And Peter Bishop wanted to take his place.

So many people had died because of what happened that night on the lake, _so many people._ In this universe, in the other, it was all done and it was _all his fault._

Everything else was irrelevant, because in his mind, he had killed them all.

The crunch of boots behind him was unnoticed until the very last minute.

And then a gentle hand was resting on his back, drawing soft circles on the dark fabric of his coat, and he knew that she had followed him here.

He wasn't surprised.

She'd asked him where he was going, and he hadn't lied because _full disclosure_ was a code that wasn't going to be broken, not by _him_, and he'd told her. He shrugged off her concern, told her he'd be fine, but he wouldn't be, and he _wasn't_, because this was _him_ and he was _here_ and so was _he._

It wasn't right.

He could hear her, he could _feel_ her, crouch to his level, her hands slipping around his waist from behind as she buried her face in his back and breathed him in.

"Hey."

He smiled, then, at that simple syllable that somehow made everything better, her sweet, warm voice somehow demolishing all the cold that he had previously been consumed by, and he _knew_ that this was surely a gift that he was unworthy of, having her here with him to chase away all his nightmares and dark thoughts and peel away his layers of cynicism to let him shine through.

"Hey."

Olivia sighed into his coat, humming slightly as she ran her hands up his torso. She let them rest on his chest, tapping lightly in an attempt to comfort him.

He did not speak, and he did not move, and he did not reach up to still her fingers by grasping them in his own like he wanted to, because he just didn't have the energy anymore.

She removed her arms from under him and stood up behind him once more, gripping his elbows as she pulled him up to her level, and he turned to face her.

Their eyes met.

The strands of hair that had fallen from her ponytail waved in front of her face as she entwined their hands and offered him a small smile, a ray of sunshine for him to hold onto as he was immersed in darkness.

It was almost too much, to have this stunningly _perfect_ woman here for him, to have a godly being like _her_ to care for him. He looked away from her, breaking their eye contact, to stare down from the hill they were on.

It was a beautiful day.

It really was – the snow coated everything in sight, and the beautiful white layer seemed to give everything an unearthly glow. The sun was out, and the view was nice, and he had his true love, his _soul mate,_ in front of him to let him know that everything was going to be alright.

"You okay?"

_Yes, Olivia, of course I'm okay, why would you ask? I'm fine, I'm just fine, don't worry about me, it's nothing..._

"No."

She cupped his cheek with her cool palm, fondly brushing her thumb over the rough stubble that had thrived on his face for as long as she could remember.

"I know."

Her hand traveled behind his head and into his hair, and then she pulled his face into her shoulder. He buried his nose into her neck, hoping that he could steal some of this, her composure, her love, her warmth.

"Don't worry, Peter. It's normal."

He let out a dry chuckle into her skin.

"A person being upset over the death of their alternate is _normal?_"

She laughed, too, then, and he didn't know _why,_ because it wasn't funny, it was anything but, and yet this friendly exchange was almost as comforting as her presence.

"I mean... it's okay. To hurt."

And then he was trembling, shaking in her arms, because she was right, it _hurt,_ it really did, it hurt so much that it almost felt good.

And then he was crying.

He hadn't done it in so long – it was a bit of a relief to let it out, to let it _go_, to release the tears he'd been holding back throughout this entire hellhole that was supposedly known as a _life._

"Shh..."

He couldn't.

He reached behind her and pressed her closer, anything to get her _closer_, and his fingers were resting in the small of her back, and he was _not_ okay, and yet _somehow_, _that_ was okay.

"Peter..."

The very sound of his name made him clutch her tighter, _closer_, because he loved her, and he didn't _care_ if all those people had died because of him, because of what Walter did, because in this moment, he was here. He was with her, and they had each other, and that somehow justified everything because he would give anything to keep her forever with him, like this, just the two of them on the top of a hill where he was buried.

"I'm sorry..."

He wasn't sure who he was saying it too, what he was sorry for, _why_ he had said it, but it felt right. And Olivia took that, she ran her hands down his neck and over his coat and let him apologize for something he had never done, something that had never been his fault, because he _needed_ that.

"It's okay, Peter."

He shakily removed her hair from its ponytail for the sole purpose of twisting his fingers into it, so he could lose himself into her and everything she was and everything she _meant_.

Home. Love. Safety. Warmth.

_Happiness._

"I love you."

She pulled away from him, then, just so she could lock her eyes with his once more, her face as serious as he had ever seen it.

"I love you, too. And I want you to feel better _right now_ because you didn't do a thing wrong."

Her lips brushed his gently, and then he was crying again, because he was _here _with the only woman he had ever really truly loved and _he_ was down in the ground below them.

"Don't cry, Peter. Please don't cry. I can't handle that."

He nodded silently, and then she was back in his arms, and complete and utter stillness resumed.

He looked at the grave once more.

Sitting there was an old coin, the one that he'd had in his universe and the one that the other Peter surely had over here.

Disentangling himself from Olivia, he knelt down to pick it up. He flipped it through his fingers several times before holding it to his face and breathing the old, metallic scent of it.

Once, years ago, another Peter had held this, had preformed the very same tricks, had believed that it would give him luck.

That Peter was gone.

And then _this_ Peter, the one who was alive and well and completely in love with the blonde woman behind him, knew what to say.

"_Thank you._"

It was whispered, let out in a tiny breath of air, but Olivia heard it. And she approached him, and touched his head gently, and he knew that it was time to go.

He placed the coin back onto the grave, hoisting himself up and smiling at his partner.

"Let's go."

And they did.

Peter had never really dwelled on it, but perhaps _that_ Peter had died just so this one could live.

**Meant to be drabble for my series, but this happened.**


End file.
